


Road Trip

by Josselin



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-20
Updated: 2011-03-20
Packaged: 2017-11-03 15:04:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An extension of Damon and Elena's season 1 road trip to Georgia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Road Trip

Elena definitely had some flaws. For one thing, she drew out boring conversations much longer than they ever had to go on.

"Where are we?"

"Arkansas."

"What? No, we're not."

Damon hummed his disagreement.

"We were in Alabama," Elena said stubbornly.

"And now we're in Arkansas," Damon said agreeably.

"That's not possible," she objected.

Damon didn't even bother to dignify that with a response, he just rolled his eyes. But Elena was a woman, so of course she dragged a map out of the glove compartment and proceeded to lecture him that Arkansas and Alabama were separate states, and that Mississippi was in between them, as though Damon didn't know that, as though he hadn't fucking walked across the entire distance on foot with a rifle and one and a half boots, and finally he told her to put a sock in it.

That lasted for fifteen whole minutes before she announced she was hungry, and that was completely fine, because Damon was hungry also, and also Elena was much improved by the application of several shots of liquor. Damon had learned that lesson on day 1.

This was day 5.

On day five it only took two shots for Elena to start asking the personal questions. Damon put this down to his brother's excessive and ridiculous prudence around all normal bodily functions exacerbating a slightly prurient interest on Elena's part.

"Does your hair grow even though you're dead?"

Damon ran a hand through the hair in question. "Why, do you have a new style suggestion for me?" he raised an eyebrow at her.

"Answer me!" she insisted, and he decided to indulge her because she was already clinging to his arm and that was two shots earlier than she'd become handsy the night before.

"Yes, my hair grows."

"Even though you're dead."

He nodded. "You know, everyone's hair continues growing after they're dead."

"What, no, gross," Elena objected, giggling.

"Well," he corrected himself, "It appears it's growing, anyway."

"No," Elena said ridiculously, but she was giggling and burying her face in his shoulder.

"Yes," Damon insisted. "Your skin dries out after you're dead--I mean, dead, dead, not me, dead," he clarified, "And that makes it seem like your hair is getting longer even after you've passed on."

"How do you know that?" Elena said.

"Hey, I've been embalmed three times," he said. "They slather moisturizer all over you." He raised an eyebrow at her again. "Not that I need it. My skin is perfect," he boasted.

Elena looked torn between disgust and fascination. She raised a hand without seeming to realize it. He caught it and brought her fingertips to his face.

"See?" he said. "No moisturizing necessary." And she kept her fingers on his face for a few minutes before she let her hand drop. He fumbled with his other hand to try to take a picture with his phone, but didn't get a chance to look at how it turned out until 17 minutes later. Elena's fingers were resting gently on his cheek, he was looking at her, she was looking at him with a somber expression. Damon smirked triumphantly at the phone and attached the picture to a message to his brother. He had a feeling it was going to be a good night.

After two more shots, Elena decided she wanted to see him bite someone. "I want to see you bite someone," she confided in his ear, the smell of rum heavy on her breath.

He bared his teeth playfully at her.

"Not me," she drawled, drawing out the second word and slapping his arm remonstratively.

"But it's okay if it's someone else?"

"Well, don't *hurt* them," Elena explained. "No killing," she said sternly.

"No killing," Damon echoed. "No hurting."

"Right," Elena agreed, before bursting into another fit of giggles. "Just biting. And..." there was a long pause while Damon waited with genuine interest for what she was going to say next.

"And," he prompted, when Elena seemed to have lost her train of thought.

"And watching," Elena continued. "For me. Watching for me, biting for you."

And the way she said watching, Damon was beginning to think this might be interesting.

He cheated a bit in picking up a girl at a bar. Damon Salvatore was completely capable of picking up a woman at a bar without resorting to mind-control, thank you very much, but he was slightly concerned that if he gave Elena time to do too many more shots, she'd come up with some other random impulse for the night, and he was feeling vaguely attached to the biting scenario impulse. So he picked a college coed who had been drinking slightly more than Elena, and smiled at her sweetly and raised his eyebrow and told her she wanted to come back to his place with him tonight, and she nodded in agreement.

"I want to go back to your place with you tonight," she agreed, and he took her hand in his right, went back to the table where Elena was finishing eating a basket of French fries and grabbed her hand in his left, and pulled both girls out of the bar behind him.

He pushed the passenger seat forward and helped both of the girls crawl in to the back seat. Elena was giggling throatily. "What's your name?" she asked the coed.

"Maggie," the coed said, giving a measuring glance to Elena, flipping her eyes to Damon, and then returning her gaze to Elena. "What's yours?"

Elena leaned in close to Maggie and whispered something in her ear. Damon snapped a picture on his phone, shut the car door gently behind the two girls, texted the picture to Stefan, and walked around to the driver's door feeling that all in all, the night ahead was remarkably promising.

He wouldn't typically take someone back to where he was staying just to bite them, especially if he didn't intend to kill them. It tended to be a lot of hassle, and if you had any degree of finesse, you could manage the whole thing at a bar or in a parking lot without bringing the bother home with you. In the eighties he'd actually become particularly proficient at biting people on the dance floor during a slow song without even losing his rhythm. You just had to tell them not to scream. And--well, he didn't have a great deal of ground for comparison--but he flattered himself that he could make it rather good.

But Elena wanted to watch.

So he drove to a motel. Maggie and Elena were having drunken conversation in the back seat. They probably thought their whispers were too low for him to hear, but their words were as clear to him as the incessant buzzing of his phone, which likely represented Stefan's eight millionth demand to tell him where they were and bring Elena home.

Elena and Maggie's chatter was interesting primarily because each of them had a completely different scenario on their mind and neither of them realized it. Maggie was clearly thinking threesome--Damon could tell that even without reading her mind, though the thought was rolling off her so obviously it was hard not to read her mind as well--and she had checked Elena out and decided she was on board with the threesome game plan. Elena was staring a little too obviously at Maggie's neck, but Maggie wasn't noticing or wouldn't know what to make of it if she did notice.

The clerk at the motel was giving him obviously envious glances as he paid, and Damon pretended not to notice, reading through Stefan's messages to see if his brother had managed anything creative. He hadn't, it was more of the same predictability--"What are you doing?" "Don't touch her!" "Damon!" "Where are you?" "Is Elena okay?" "Tell Elena to call me!" "Damon, if you hurt her..." etc. Stefan didn't really get texting. Damon sent him back a message: :P and then turned his phone off again and stuck it in his pocket. He accepted a key from the clerk and turned back to where Elena and Maggie were sitting on a vinyl bench.

"Ladies," he said, gallantly offering each of them an arm. Elena stood up first and took it, leaning heavily on him, and Maggie followed, smiling sweetly. Damon smiled sweetly back at her.

He opened the door and stepped through it first. There were times where chivalry was important and there were times when it was important to scope the room before the more vulnerable members of your party entered. The room was clear and the furnishings were lame. Elena didn't seem to notice and ducked into the bathroom. Maggie looked around and dropped her purse on a chair.

Damon took a moment while Elena was out of earshot to set the scene. "I'm going to bite you," he told Maggie. "Don't fight it," he told her, using only a touch of mind-control; she was already pretty suggestible. She nodded agreeably, and rested her hands on his waist; his hands were cupping her face. She was wearing a large necklace with a lot of beads on it--he unclasped it in the back and removed it gently from her neck and let it drop softly on to the same chair as her purse.

Elena emerged from the bathroom. "Hey," she objected. "You started without me!"

Maggie crooked a finger at her saucily. "Well, get over here, honey," she said.

Damon smoothed a hand through Maggie's hair which smelled sweet and vaguely like mangos. "Elena likes to watch," he told Maggie. "So how about we move over here so she can have a good view?"

Elena sat down on the bed closer to the door; Damon moved Maggie in front of the other bed and looked up at Elena while he massaged Maggie's back absently with one hand. He raised an eyebrow at Elena to see if she was ready, if she could see, if she still wanted to see. Elena nodded.

So once Elena confirmed that her view as unobstructed, Damon went ahead and bit Maggie. He let his face change, first, and let Elena look at his changed visage for a moment over Maggie's shoulder, and then he bit her as gently as possible. Maggie made a soft noise, but didn't try to fight it. Damon wasn't sure she would have fought it even regardless of his earlier strategy, but with his eyes locked on Elena's across the room he was just as glad that he had taken the precaution. There were times when it was more interesting for feeding to involve a struggle, when the struggle and the growing recognition in the victim's eyes made it all the more exciting, where yet another set of doe eyes staring up blankly at him seemed to hold zero interest whatsoever.

But he wasn't concerned about any of that right now. Maggie held no interest for him regardless, but he wasn't thinking about her, and he didn't think Elena was, either. He suckled a bit on Maggie's neck, vaguely monitoring the strength of her pulse against his cheek and kept his eyes on Elena. She had risen slightly from her place on the bed, and took a step closer to him across the room. He allowed that, and even allowed her two additional steps, and then he lifted his head from Maggie's neck and raised one hand from where it was cradling Maggie's back and used it to make a halting motion at Elena.

She froze, and Damon's attention was momentarily divided between the motionless Elena across the room and the slow pulse of blood down Maggie's shoulder. He licked up the blood spilled quickly, almost reflexively, before he even knew what he was doing, and then he gestured back to Elena, shaking his head from side-to-side slowly. Elena Gilbert liked to think she was in charge, but this was one case where she was not going to have her cake and eat it. If she wanted to watch, she could stay across the room. If she wanted to walk into his arms, she could do it without the shield of another girl between them.

Damon lowered his face again and drank further. It was actually possible to drink about half a gallon of blood before shock really set in, and in normal circumstances--eating regularly and avoiding injury--half a gallon was just about the right amount to sate the hunger. It was certainly possible to drink more, but not usually necessary, not that he was opposed to occasional overindulgence. But he moderated himself even further while Elena was watching, stopping when Maggie just started to seem restless.

He stopped carefully, licking the wound gently so it would close faster, and ignoring Maggie's fidgeting in his arms until he was satisfied the wound was coagulating properly. He eased her down on the bed. She reached for him again as he set her down. "Shh," he said. "Just lay down for a moment," he told her, and then he moved across the room and sat down on the bed next to Elena.

Elena leaned into him without hesitation. After a moment, she reached up and traced the skin around his eyes. "Does it hurt?" she asked.

"Mmm?" Damon said, not sure how to explain the concept of a good hurt to a high school almost-virgin, but Elena clarified. "Your eyes--your face," she said. "When it does the--" she demonstrated by making a hilarious face of her own.

Damon laughed out loud. "Do that again," he said.

Elena blushed slightly, and the blood beneath the fragile skin of her cheeks might have been enough to bring the blood back into a younger vampire's eyes, but if age was good for anything, it was self control. She ducked her face, embarrassed by his laughter. "No!" she said. "Answer the question," she said, still not meeting his eyes and shoving slightly at his waist. Her shove was weak, but he agreeably swayed to the side and wrapped an arm around her shoulders when he swayed back.

"Nah," he told her. "Not more than blushing hurts your pretty cheeks." He pinched one of her cheeks in demonstration, and she swatted at his hand and he laughed again.

Maggie seemed to stir at their laughter, and Elena seemed surprised that there was still at third person in the room with them.

"All right," Damon said. "Time for you to catch a cab," he said to Maggie, pull his phone out of his pocket to call one for her. He had four new text messages from Stefan.

He walked Maggie out to the curb courteously when the cab arrived. "You had a great time," he told her, looking deep into her eyes, "but you don't remember the details." She nodded agreeably again, gave him a saucy wink, and climbed into the back of the cab with her purse.

Damon turned around and raised an eyebrow at Elena, who had trailed him out to the parking lot. She was leaning against the door. "I was coming right back," he told her.

"She thinks we had a threesome!" Elena said, sounding vaguely horrified and at least five steps behind the clue bus.

Damon just laughed. "What did you want her to think?"

Elena whapped him on the arm; she was getting slightly too fond of doing that. "Now she's going around, living her life, thinking that the three of us had sex."

"At least she thinks it was good," Damon said philosophically. "It would be really terrible if she was going around, living her life, thinking that the three of us had bad sex. I never have bad sex," he told Elena seriously.

"The three of us did not have sex," Elena objected. Damon was guiding her back toward the room; the motel clerk was giving them some weird glances.

"What does it matter, you'll never see her again," Damon said, rolling his eyes and opening the room door again and ushering Elena inside.

Once in the room with the door latched again, he flopped onto the bed near the window. "So," he asked Elena, who was weaving slightly near the other bed. "Was it good for you?" he said, with the appropriate leer.

Elena rolled her eyes at him. "She's going to be all right, right?" Elena asked, somewhat belatedly.

"She'll be fine," Damon said reassuringly. Elena was eyeing the other bed with uncertainty, so Damon opened his arms suggestively, and to his surprise, Elena crossed the room and collapsed into them willingly enough. She settled her face on his chest, and he wrapped one arm around her waist and used the other to stroke her hair. And after that, she was mercifully quiet, and Damon spent the rest of the night listening to the steady cadence of her breath and coasting on the fringes of her terrifyingly banal dreams of high school classes and walking down the hall to put things in her locker. He wondered how much longer she would stay in this road-trip dream with him before she returned to the non-dream reality of high school in Mystic Falls. Damon checked her phone once a day, and Stefan was still calling her, too, and yesterday she actually picked up one of his calls. But Damon wasn't one to worry overly much about the future.

So he snapped one last picture that day, of Elena sleeping necklace-free on his chest and himself smiling wickedly at his phone, sent it to Stefan with great glee. Tomorrow he'd see how far how much further they could go.

\---


End file.
